Diamonds are a girl’s best friend…? Examining Gender and Careers in the Jewellery Industry

Using Acker’s (2009) concept of inequality regimes, this paper examines the practices and processes of gender inequality in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter (BJQ), highlighting the complex and subtle nature of discrimination sometimes at play and the strategies used by those that progress within this context. The project involved in-depth interviews during which participants recounted their career stories. Our research study examines the ways in which men and women in the BJQ account for their careers in order to examine the underlying gender regimes that influence the everyday practices of workers in this context. Our findings suggest that contrary to contemporary images of the creative industries, jewellery making remains deeply traditional with structures and processes that both overtly and covertly disadvantage women workers. Empirically the paper enhances our understanding of the way that this creative cluster operates and examines how that disadvantages particular groups of workers. Theoretically the paper contributes to our knowledge of the use of the concept of gender regimes at a cluster level.